Take the money and run

Take the money and run. That may well be the motto of officials at CGI Federal, the company that botched the rollout of the Obamacare website – www.healthcare.gov – last fall.

Government officials announced last week they are not renewing CGI’s contract to handle the website. Another company, Accenture, will be paid for the task.

But not to worry, if you are a CGI executive. The government paid the firm $97.7 million under its original contract, which called for developing a working website. Then, incredibly, Washington paid CGI another $37 million after Oct. 1, 2013, to correct problems with the site.

Failure to renew the healthcare.gov contract won’t be that hard on CGI. The company does lots of business with the government (about $950 million in contracts during 2012).

As so often is the case, no one – inside or outside the government -is being held accountable for the healthcare.gov fiasco. No wonder so many companies view contracts in Washington as the route to Easy Street.

And no wonder the government wastes billions of our dollars every year.

So yes, “take the money and run” may be a good motto for some government contractors – who understand that if they do, no one in Washington will be chasing them.